It was quite the announcement by Judith Collins I thought -- home burglaries, she said, will now be treated as a priority offence.

The police minister is frustrated by a number of issues -- not least that burglaries have increased by more than 10 per cent in the last year, and too few are solved. Very few, in fact.

But now, under a recommendation by the police commissioner, a police officer or a crime scene investigator will be sent to every home that’s been burgled.

It's a bold commitment and one that should be welcomed, I think. But it will require an enormous police resource -- surely. And I'm just not sure police have the man hours or the capacity to achieve such an ambitious goal.

Burglary is, in some cases, an entry level crime. If you look at some of our serious criminals serving time in jail, their offending began with petty theft and increased from there to burglary -- and beyond. And the media is full of stories about well-equipped organised gangs who make a lot of money, and a very good living, out of theft.

If you've never been burgled, then I would say you're in the minority. It's such a common crime.

I was burgled a few years ago now. I was house-sitting a relative's home on my own for a few months and I remember coming home one day and finding a window that had been prized open, and there was a large, treaded footprint in the middle of a coffee table that the burglar had stood on, in order to climb through the window.

He’d gone through my chest of drawers and my wardrobe, and he'd stolen my SLR camera. And I loved that camera. I was in my 20s at the time, and next to my car, the camera was probably my most valuable asset. He stole a bunch of my CDs, he’d tried to rip a big speaker stereo system out of the wall but it was wired in, so he couldn’t take that. He tried to do the same with the TV as well.

And he'd used the loo – because the seat was up. Burglars with manners. Who would have thought?

The police didn’t come to my home. Instead they said I should come into the station. I was living in Coatesville at the time, on a small farm, just north of Auckland and back then you'd consider it a semi-remote area.

And when I was at the station, the police told me that I should be aware that my house was probably being watched. The stereo system was a pretty good one, and they said the burglars might come back with someone who had expertise in removing electronics that were wired into the wall.

So for the next two months, when I went to bed at night I would drag my chest of drawers across the room and use it to block my bedroom door -- because I was living on my own, and there were no neighbours around, and I felt incredibly uneasy about the property becoming watched.

And I’ll never forget that sense of violation. That someone had been through my house. They’d been through my drawers. They’d emptied them out. And they’d stolen some of my personal belongings. They’d even stolen one of my handbags. And now there was the possibility they were watching me. Waiting for me to leave the house. Waiting to have another go at getting the stereo. Waiting to try and get into my home.

I don't think you can underestimate the impact that a burglary can have on someone's life, and it's a crime that's occurring so frequently now. The resolution rates, though, are minuscule.

It's smart, I think, to tackle our escalating burglary rate -- but I just hope the police will be resourced to meet this lofty target. They do a brilliant job already, but they’re under-resourced and for this initiative to work, it’s going to take an enormous amount of time, energy and man hours.